U.K. WMD Probe Problems Predict Our Own

[mburbank]

Blair Calls Iraq WMD Inquiry; Opponents Cry Foul
Reuters


By Mike Peacock and Katherine Baldwin

LONDON (Reuters) - Tony Blair bowed to growing pressure Tuesday, calling an inquiry into the quality of British intelligence on banned Iraqi weapons but a key opposition party refused to take part.

The Liberal Democrats said the investigation should examine the political decisions taken to wage war, rather than focus exclusively on problems with information from spies.

Blair refused, sparking criticism that the probe would be too narrowly defined to be meaningful.

"I think it is right...that we have a look at the intelligence that we received and whether it was accurate or not," Blair told a parliamentary committee. "We do not in my view need an inquiry into the political decision to go to war."



In my opinion, this is exactly the problem we will face here in the states. W. is going to handpick the people on the investigation and define what the investigation will be about. If the investigation is ONLY about how intelligence went wrong and does not focus on how intelligence was picked and poitically used by the administration, it won't be utterly useless, but it won't solve the problem either.

I'm not familliar with the British situation, but here we had an undersecretary in the Pentagon reporting hand selected intelligence directly to the Vice Presidents office. That means it was not vetted at higher levels and that it was not the offical conslusions of the CIA. If this inquiry doesn't look at practices like that and the role the VP played in predetermining the focus of intelligence then it will not restore american credability.